\section{Systems}\label{sec:Systems} % \href{sec:id70}

The first step in creating a cluster is to create the set of systems that will belong in it. The caller shall assign each player, including himself, one or two systems. The total number of systems usually is between six and ten.

Systems will be described by their statistics, and their Aspects. Details can be elaborated through narrative, but will have no mechanical effect in the game unless accompanied by Aspects.

\index{slipknot}
Each system represents some place in space where humans might reside. A place where two slipknots exist --- those mysterious points in space that allow limited faster-than-light travel. Nothing else is written in stone --- a system can be completely empty but for the slipknots, and that's got to have a story.

Typically a system consists of a star and some attendant planetary bodies. It could be a as familiar as a yellow star with eight worlds, one of which is habitable, or as exotic as an artificial quintet of neutron stars and a vast field of rubble a thousand million miles away. These things are for you to determine. They are what you invent to make sense of the statistics.
